Lost in Space
by bisexualcharliedavis
Summary: Whumptober day 27: Charlie, Matthew and Rose get lost in space.


_A/N: *panting* i can see the finish line now. Three fics away from completion. Tonight, we take a look at a space au with Charlie/Matthew. I figure I've done my other two favourite ships, might as well write for my One Truest Pairing. Though tbf I do maybe sort of have another Charlie/Matthew fic in the works. We shall see. At any rate, enjoy! Warnings: mild burn, showering together, slightly suggestive towards the end. _

"So we're stuck."

"For the time being."

Rose comically let her head fall against the console in front of her. Charlie rolled his eyes from where he was leaning against the door to the cockpit.

"Mind the equipment." He told her, already annoyed at being relegated to turrets by Matthew's annoying niece.

"I am." She replied, sitting up, and spinning around to face him. "Why don't you mind not getting our ship blown to shit?"

"Our ship?" He asked, sarcastically. "From what I remember Ball of Rats belongs to me solely, and how was I meant to know those guys were going to be able to shoot through the shields?" Rose seemingly doesn't have an answer, so she swung the chair around again, dropping her head back into the dashboard in front of her.

"What's the stats?" He asked Matthew instead. Matthew threw the status report onto the smaller screen located just behind the pilot's chair usually used for navigation. Well as far as the damage went, it could be a lot worse. It didn't seem like the oxygen system was damaged, which was a relief. He was pretty sure none of them would live very long without air. The Food Synthesiser also didn't seem to have been damaged, so it was unlikely that they'd starve to death very soon. And to his greatest relief, the shower system was not affected, which meant that he could keep having showers with water instead of the sonic shower that he'd had to install to fit with Interplanetary Police Standards.

But on the downside, the navigation system was seriously damaged, and so was their Bright Engine, meaning that they wouldn't be able to get past the speed of light. Which meant that they would have to use manual navigation if they could even get that to work with any efficiency considering that he couldn't visually see any nearby planets. He shut the screen down and walked over to see what Matthew was doing. Open in his lap he had his datapad, and he was looking for the closest planet to their location.

"Where are we?" He asked, Matthew, used his pointer finger to indicate to a planet he doesn't know.

"Noctus Sector." He replied, "Or, that's my best guess at any rate."

"Never been there," Charlie admitted, and used one hand to wipe dark oil off his face. "Have you?"

"There's one incorporated planet in the whole sector, the rest is either independent or…"

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Can we get a word through to command?"

"I already set off an S.O.S, but I think we might be in for the long haul."

"How long is the long haul?" Rose inquired.

"About three weeks until we reach the nearest planet, four until the next incorporated one."

"Joy." She said, sarcasm dripping off her tongue.

"Well, at least there's a planet nearby. We could be in a Null sector." He said, it's not really in his nature to be positive, but someone has to at least try, lest they all go insane. Matthew spun around in his chair, and looked up at him. He's unbearably close, right in the sweet spot of just close enough for comfort but far enough away that he's not crowding. Charlie met his eyes, and found them firm and green-grey. Exactly as they were the last time he'd seen them, and the time before that too.

He used to think it was novel because where he's grown up on the one hundred and third story of the fifty-sixth east tower on Earth Nine, no one had green eyes like that. But now he mostly just thought that they were just Matthew, just as he was.

"What the hell happened to you up there?" He asked, and reached up with one hand to touch his face. When his hand came away it was smeared with a mix of blood and oil.

"A panel exploded in my face." He said, "Took a hit straight on."

"They're getting to be good shots," Matthew observed.

"Maybe Charlie is just a bad shot." Rose offered, sitting up now, and working on tying her hair back into a ponytail. Unlike him and Matthew, she was wearing civilian clothes. Grey leggings, grey boots, and a peach coloured shirt with manual buttons. Though simple, the outfit was reinforced, such was the requirements of traveling with Interplanetary Police.

He undid the zipper of his overshirt and sighed as his neck was freed from its hold. Matthew did no such thing, just turned away back to the controls of the ship, like he might be able to magically turn them back onto course.

"I'm going to shower." He announced, before turning, and walking away. Ball of Rats was not a big ship, something which was a vex to him in recent history. When it was just him and Matthew, he knew exactly what he would like to spend five weeks doing, but alas that would not be possible. He didn't want to scar Rose for the rest of her life.

Matthew had been apprehensive about bringing a journalist with them on this endeavor, even if it would improve the public perception of the Interplanetary Police. He was even more apprehensive about it being his niece. Charlie still felt bad about how it ended between them, so he'd put in a good word and Matthew had agreed to bring her on one mission to get a story. Of course, it was this one mission where they'd get fired on by The Colony.

He opened the door to the grey and blue bathroom and stepped into the small shower cubicle to turn on the water. The old pipes took a moment to heat up. He used the time to strip out of his blood, torn up uniform and folded it before pausing to see himself in the mirror.

He was more white than blue, which was a sure sign that he was possibly in a bit of shock. He also had a slick of dark oil on the side of his face, and under that he had a mild-looking burn. Nothing too serious, or, nothing that required him to get help from a professional right now. He turned back toward the cubicle in the rapidly fogging bathroom and stepped into the water.

He liked a shower with water more than the sonic ones. He never felt clean after a sonic shower, though technically he knew he was. But he'd grown up bathing in water, and he found his fondness for it never left. It never left his father, the previous owner of Ball of Rats either. He turned his face upwards towards the red treated water and let it wash away the remains of the battle from his face.

When his father was alive, they'd been able to afford to live on level ninety-nine. It was nowhere near the ground levels, where the richest of the rich lived, but after he died...He chose not to dwell on it and waste his time. He dragged his fingers through his hair and watched as the water briefly ran brown with oil and soot before going back to red. The treatment made sure that he was able to use the water in the ship for a few months at a time before having to refill when they landed. If something else broke it he supposed they could drink it; but it would taste foul. Such were the sacrifices one made.

The first time he felt the rain, he'd been so surprised by it. He knew what rain was, of course, it was just that rain on Earth Nine was corrosive. When he'd been on Earth Five for training, he'd stood out on the grass, and felt the cold dots on his skin. He'd been surprised enough to lag behind the other recruits going into the mess hall and almost got carded for it. The others he'd been training with were surprised by his surprise. There was no one else from Earth Nine there and he wasn't surprised. Earth Nine was considered the second rate Earth, when you could be on Earth Eight, or Earth Ten, both of which had much nicer weather cycles and much longer days than his home.

The only person he'd seen from his home in a while was Mattie, but she came from the other side of the planet, where the rich lived in the tops of the buildings in plush penthouses, and the poor lived on the ground floor in hovels and shacks.

"Mind if I join you?"

In the time he'd been thinking, Matthew had found time to come in and get naked. His clothes were on the floor in piles, and Charlie had half a mind to tell him to pick them up but…

"Sure."

He opened the door to the cubicle and joined Charlie under the steamy spray. After a moment, he had to lean forward so some of his weight was on Charlie and off his bad leg. For not the first time Charlie wished that he'd invested in a bath instead of just a shower. Matthew didn't say anything about it, and he didn't have to.

"I still don't understand what you see in this." He replied, turning his head so the water wouldn't get in his mouth, "A sonic shower would be much faster."

"It's not about speed. It's about the feeling." He grumbled. Earth Five did not use showers as they did on Earth Nine. But that wouldn't surprise him; Earth Five was built up around the time of the global shortages on Earth-Two and Three, so they probably didn't use them; too concerned with conserving water. Earth Nine didn't have that issue. Once the water from the rain was treated, it was good and there was no shortage of it.

"It's nice to feel you at a human temperature." Matthew remarked, "Maybe I should join you more often."

"You don't like sleeping next to me at my usual temperature?"

"I like it better when you're not leaching my body heat." He mumbled, before leaning back against the glass wall of the cubicle. "Let me see that burn." Charlie did as asked, and Matthew gently ran his fingers next to the injury. It didn't hurt before he got a look at it, but since getting under the water it had been mounting a sort of stinging sensation from the exposed, raw skin. "I'll get some gauze for you when we get out." Matthew decided and Charlie, as he always did, deferred to him on the issue.

"Sure thing, Boss. Do you think we should be worrying? That they're getting better? I've never seen ships like that before in the hands of the colony." Matthew blew out a sigh, and picked up Charlie's bar of soap, rubbing it between his hands, causing a blue lather.

"I don't know." He admitted, "But if they are getting any kind of power...Ashby'll want to know about it."

"Yeah. I was afraid of that." Charlie wasn't afraid of Doug Ashby, but he didn't like the man. He certainly didn't like any of the stories Matthew had to tell him about the guy. He didn't really want to talk about work in the shower, naked with a handsome man so he changed the subject. "Are you really going to be stuck here for a month?"

"Maybe. Might be longer, since we only have a vague idea of our location relative to the planets nearby."

"Not the answer I was hoping for." He admitted and took the soap from him to rub against his arms. Matthew leaned over so they were leaning chest to chest with his arms resting on Charlie's shoulders. "Boss?"

For his troubles, he received a kiss. He kissed back feeling heat inside him from something other than the shower. Matthew just had that sort of effect on him, especially now they'd decided to go ahead and open pandora's box. He closed his first set of eyelids, so that the water running off of Matthew's face didn't get into his eyes.

"I always worries me when you do that." The other man observed, hardly moving away enough to speak.

"Use my first eyelids? Why?"

"It's a reminder that you're not human."

Sometimes, for a few perfect moments at a time, Charlie could forget where they came from. On Earth Nine, they were rarely bothered with the couplings of those on any floor above fifty, and if two compatible species wanted to procreate there was nothing to stop them. Which was what happened with his parents, his lovely human mother, and his well-traveled alien father. On Earth-Three, they did not have such opinions. Human men went with human women, and all others be damned.

"Does it bother you?" He'd always assumed that Matthew found him human enough.

"At first, I was bothered I could feel like that about not just an alien, but a male alien."

"I used to worry about being attracted to men." He said, "Since I'm not genetically compatible with them."

"Do you still?"

"Not now I've got you. The rest is… Well, the rest doesn't matter."

"The rest doesn't matter." He agreed, and Charlie sighed softly into the water.

"Do you find me...Human enough?"

"Human enough?"

"I always thought you did."

"I bothered me, not you. I don't care about how human you are so long as you're a good cop. I wouldn't have even looked twice if you weren't a good cop."

"Good thing that's all I've ever aspired to be, since I was a kid."

"Do you want children?" Matthew asked, he sounded curious rather than anything else.

"I don't know." Charlie admitted, "I don't think so." Pause, "Is that wrong?"

"Why would that be wrong?"

"No one to pass along my family line too, not doing my civic duty keep a steady flow of children on the so-called forgotten Earth, that kind of thing."

"I never wanted children," Matthew said. "Too much time away from work."

"It was really simple?"

"I thought it was." Charlie realized what Matthew was telling him. If you stick with me, you won't be having any children, and well. He was just fine with that.

"We have a month in space," Matthew said, thoughtfully. "No real responsibilities. Nothing but time on our hands...Maybe we have ourselves a little vacation." They didn't really do vacations. Neither of them were fond of being away from work. Maybe this could end up turning in their favor. He kissed him again and felt one of the hands over his shoulder slip down off his shoulder, down his side, until his arm was resting on his hip, his hand just below the small of his back.

"You might want to stop that hand if you don't want to scar your poor niece for life. The walls aren't exactly soundproof.

"She's a big girl," Matthew replied, and well? Charlie wasn't one to turn away from a good time.


End file.
